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Bruce Shapiro

Contributing Editor

Bruce Shapiro, a contributing editor to The Nation, is executive director of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, a global resource center and think tank for journalists covering violence, conflict and tragedy.

He has been described as one of the most “sharp and thoughtful” (Washington Post), “perceptive” (Slate) and “nuanced” (Village Voice) analysts on the contemporary American scene.

Shapiro began his career on the fertile journalistic and political terrain of Chicago in the 1970s, where he was a founding editor of the radical magazine Haymarket. He was later co-founder and editor of the New Haven Independent, a weekly newspaper devoted to innovative grassroots muckraking. From 1991-1995 Shapiro was director of The Nation Institute’s Supreme Court Watch, a civil liberties watchdog.

Shapiro has written extensively on civil liberties and human rights. For The Nation, Shapiro has reported since 1981 on subjects ranging from the psychopolitics of cults to the privatization of public schools, and dissected national events from the nomination of Clarence Thomas to Bush Administration war crimes.

Shapiro is co-author of Legal Lynching: The Death Penalty and America’s Future, with Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (New Press), praised by Washington Post Book World for “intellectual clarity” which “might convince even the strongest supporters that the machinery of death has run its course.” His most recent book is Shaking the Foundations: 200 Years of Investigative Journalism in America (Nation Books), called “vibrant and pertinent” by Columbia Journalism Review.

On his first day of testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Samuel Alito was purely political, focusing on his blue-collar roots and the accomplishments of his immigrant family. But Democratic Senators focused on his judicial record on abortion, voting rights and conflicts of interest.

The refusal of the California governor, who built his fame feeding adolescent fantasies of killing, to grant clemency to a former gang leader who tried to dissuade kids from violence only adds to the widening discomfort over the death penalty in America.

Power-friendly reporters like Judith Miller are easily manipulated
by selective leaks. But what we need now is more civil disobedience by
whistle-blowers exposing renditions, acts of torture and the flagrant
abuse of power.

What have Bush and his allies learned from this sorry
epidode? Intellectual substance matters. Executive privilege is not
absolute. Roe v. Wade is a bear trap for the GOP.

The political chess match between the White House and Senate
Democrats over the future of the Supreme Court took on new complexity
as three Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to confirm
John G. Roberts Jr.

Will her solitary protest become a turning point for a nation disillusioned with a President and his war?

Is John Roberts worth a fight?

If you like the Patriot Act and Guantánamo, you'll love John
Roberts. More than anything else, to fill Sandra Day O'Connor's seat on the Supreme Court, the Bush White House sought an advocate for ever-expanding executive branch powers. The stakes in Roberts's nomination could not be higher. Bruce Shapiro reports.